—With the annual meeting for San Diego-based Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) less than a week away, three proxy advisory firms—Glass Lewis, International Shareholder Services (ISS), and Egan Jones—have sided with the company in its proxy fight with the Swiss giant Roche. Roche is battling to control the Illumina board, which has rejected its $6.7 billion hostile takeover bid. Roche urged Illumina shareholders in a letter yesterday to vote their proxy cards for Roche’s slate of independent director nominees.

—There’s a new molecular diagnostics company in town. San Diego-based NexDx says it finalized an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with the UC San Diego School of Medicine to commercialize discoveries made in the lab of rheumatology specialist Gary Firestein. NexDx raised about $250,000 six months ago to develop new diagnostics technology for rheumatoid arthritis. UCSD’s Firestein and Jonathan Lim of San Diego’s City Hill Ventures founded NexDx last year.

—Genalyte, a San Diego life sciences company developing a new approach for autoimmune testing, said it … Next Page »